Enders In Exile

and raised it.
    The chamber seemed to
go on forever, supported by the writhing stone pillars. Arches like an
ancient temple, but half melted.
    "It's composite rock,"
said Po.
    Sel looked down at the
boy and saw him with a self-lighting microscope, examining the rock of
a column.
    "Seems like the same
mineral composition as the floor," said Po. "But grainy. As if it had
been ground up and then glued back together."
    "But not glued," said
Sel. "Bonded? Cement?"
    "I think it's been
glued," said Po. "I think it's organic."
    Po took the stick back
and held the flame of the lamp under an elbow of one of the twistiest
columns. The substance did not catch fire, but it did begin to sweat
and drip.
    "Stop," said Sel.
"Let's not bring the thing down on us!"
    Now that they could
walk upright, they moved forward into the cavern. It was Po who thought
of marking their path by cutting off bits of his blanket and dropping
them. He looked back from time to time to make sure they were following
a straight line. Sel looked back, too, and saw how impossible it would
be to find the entrance they had come through, if the path were not
marked.
    "So tell me how this
was made," said Sel. "No toolmarks on the ceiling or floor. These
columns, made from ground-up stone with added glue. A kind of paste,
yet strong enough to support the roof of a chamber this size. Yet no
grinding equipment left behind, no buckets to carry the glue."
    "Giant rock-eating
worms," said Po.
    "That's what I was
thinking, too," said Sel.
    Po laughed. "I was
joking."
    "I wasn't," said Sel.
    "How could worms eat
rock?"
    "Very sharp teeth that
regrow quickly. Grinding their way through. The fine gravel bonds with
some kind of gluey mucus and they extrude these columns, then bind them
to the ceiling."
    "But how could such a
creature evolve?" said Po. "There's no nutrition in the rock. And it
would take enormous energy to do all this. Not to mention whatever
their teeth were made of."
    "Maybe they didn't
evolve," said Sel. "Look—what's that?"
    There was something
shiny ahead. Reflecting the lamplight.
    As they got closer,
they saw reflections from spots on the columns, too. Even the ceiling.
    But nothing else was as
bright as the thing lying on the floor.
    "A glue bucket?" asked
Po.
    "No," said Sel. "It's a
giant bug. Beetle. Ant. Something like—look at this, Po."
    They were close enough
now to see that it was six-legged, though the middle pair of limbs
seemed more designed for clinging than walking or grasping. The front
ones were for grasping and tearing. The hind ones, for digging and
running.
    "What do you think?
Bipedal?" asked Sel.
    "Six or four, and
bipedal at need." Po nudged it with his foot. No response. The thing
was definitely dead. He bent over and flexed and rotated the hind
limbs. Then the front ones. "Climb, crawl, walk, run, all equally well,
I think."
    "Not a likely
evolutionary path," said Sel. "Anatomy tends to commit one way or the
other."
    "Like you said. Not
evolved, bred."
    "For what?"
    "For mining," said Po.
He rolled the thing over onto its belly. It was very heavy; it took
several tries. But now they could see much better what it was that
caught the light. The thing's back was a solid sheet of gold. As smooth
as a beetle's carapace, but so thick with gold that the thing must
weigh ten kilos at least.
    Twenty-five, maybe
thirty centimeters long, thick and stubby. And its entire exoskeleton
thinly gilt, with the back heavily armored in gold.
    "Do you think these
things were mining for gold?" asked Po.
    "Not with that mouth,"
said Sel. "Not with those hands."
    "But the gold got
inside it somehow. To be deposited in the shell."
    "I think you're right,"
said Sel. "But this is the adult. The harvest. I think the formics
carried these things out of the mine and took them off to be purified.
Burn off the organics and leave the pure metal behind."
    "So they ingested the
gold as larvae . . ."
    "Went into a cocoon . .
."
    "And when they emerged,
their bodies were encased in gold."
    "And there they are,"
said Sel, holding up the light again. Only now he went closer to the
columns, where they could now see that the glints of reflection were
from the bodies of half-formed creatures, their backs embedded in the
pillars, their foreheads and bellies shiny with a layer of thin gold.
    "The columns are the
cocoons," said Po.
    "Organic mining," said
Sel. "The formics bred these things specifically to extract gold."
    "But what for? It's not
like the formics used